


Falling Stars

by Marcus_S_Lazarus



Series: The Twilight Storm [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Los Angeles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-02-23 15:00:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23546677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marcus_S_Lazarus/pseuds/Marcus_S_Lazarus
Summary: A vacation in Los Angeles takes a dangerous turn when the Doctor and Bella learn that an old foe of the Doctor’s has returned to the city.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Bella Swan
Series: The Twilight Storm [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1694503
Kudos: 6





	1. Hollywood

As I walked out of the TARDIS, my eyes widened at the sight that greeted me; a vast hill, 'HOLLYWOOD' spread out across the side facing me, visible over the tops of the various buildings in front of us, the TARDIS positioned at the end of a small alley that connected on to a long street that was filled with people, each of them dressed in the fifties-style fashions that the Doctor had directed me to when he'd told me to dress up for our next destination.

I might prefer my usual attire for comfort purposes, but there was still something thrilling about the chance to dress for the occasion and actually blend in rather than simply finding ourselves in trouble so quickly that nobody felt like wasting time asking us about what we were wearing. On the Doctor's advice, I was wearing a long dark blue dress that came down to mid-way between my knees and ankles, leaving my arms and shoulders bare without showing off too much of my back and cleavage; the Doctor, as always, hadn't changed his usual attire apart from leaving his long brown coat in the TARDIS, but he had taken the time to slick back his hair with some kind of gel and was wearing slightly large black sunglasses as he studied our surroundings.

"So, what do you think?" the Time Lord asked, locking the TARDIS door behind him before he took my arm and led us to the end of the alley where it joined the main street; I was too busy being temporarily stunned into silence to think about what the Doctor was doing. "Good choice?"

"H... _Hollywood_?" I said at last, the initial shock wearing off as I looked back at the Doctor with an enthusiastic smile as we began to walk; given human nature, it was unlikely that anyone would ask too many questions about my apparent surprise at our location. "We're in _Hollywood_?"

"Well, Los Angeles, to be precise, but we're in the Hollywood district, anyway; mid-1951, to be exact," the Doctor said, grinning casually at me. "I thought that an opportunity for a quick vacation would be nice, and where better than this place back when the business still had some class and neither of us are interested in trying out for anything?"

"You've been here before?" I asked curiously, grateful for a chance to discuss a more pleasant part of my friend's past after the bleak mood of recent events.

"A couple of times, really; actually have a few friends in this era, but... well, it's been a while since I visited, and my experience with America varies; you Americans are a pleasant enough group, but sometimes I just never quite seem to get the _country_ , you know," the Doctor said, shrugging slightly as he looked at the city around us before he locked the TARDIS and began to walk down the street. "Besides, we ended up here mostly at the old girl's discretion, anyway; I set the coordinates at random, with the only condition being that she should take us somewhere reasonably relaxing but glamorous while leaving the final choice up to her, but since neither of us are looking for a big break in the business this probably wasn't a bad choice."

"I agree with _that_ ," I said, smiling as I accepted his offered arm as we walked down the street, only for my eyes to settle on the distinctive sign above the buildings before us.

"The sign... looks a bit different..." I said, looking uncertainly at the nine large letters; I wondered if it was just because I wasn't looking at it on a screen as a shot in a movie or something like that.

"This version of the sign's a few feet shorter than the one you're familiar with; the 'land' was removed just last year, and they replaced the rest of it in the late 1970s when the letters became too damaged due to constant exposure," the Doctor explained with a casual smile. "Anyway, we've got enough time to just wander for the moment; anything in particular you want to see?"

"Whatever we can," I said firmly, smiling as I looked at the world of the past around us right now, confusion over the changed sign forgotten.

 _This_ was why I'd accepted the Doctor's offer to travel with him; a chance to see people, places and events the way that nobody else in my time would ever be able to see them, escaping my own personal past into the bargain (I found it unlikely that the Cullens or other vampires would have ever even bothered to come here; blending in would have been all but impossible given how constantly sunny this place was).

We spent the day touring Hollywood after the immediate question of location had been answered, the Doctor occasionally pointing out famous landmarks as we walked, such as the cars of the Pacific Electric Railway (Along with a few areas that would become other famous landmarks, such as the Gilmore Stadium that would eventually be demolished to allow the construction of the CBS Television City the following year). The Doctor even took the time to check into a hotel- while taking care to get adjoining rooms rather than the same room; he'd introduced me as his niece-, confident that the TARDIS would be safe locked and hidden in the alley where we'd arrived for the next few days while wanting to provide me with the full Hollywood experience.

Finally, after a day's sightseeing, the Doctor and I were sitting down in a restaurant a short distance from our hotel, the Doctor having dropped in at a bank to withdraw some money he'd moved into an account during his last visit to the States to fund our holiday.

"That was... I mean, _wow_!" I said, grinning at the Doctor as he sat opposite me, chewing at the last of his food while I swallowed the last of my drink (I'd only allowed myself a single beer; I didn't want to run the risk of getting drunk and talking too much about the future). "I mean, you hear about this place all the time, but _being_ here..."

"Well," the Doctor said, smiling casually at me as he picked up a newspaper that someone had left on a nearby table, "the town's gone through a lot of changes, but it still manages to create a great impression... when you're not trying, anyway."

"Huh?" I said, surprised at the sudden edge to the Doctor's voice when he'd made that last comment. "What do you mean?"

"Just... the last time I spent a lot of time in Los Angeles- allowing for this period where I'd lost my memory and was just passing through, anyway-, I had to deal with a rather... unusual invasion attempt that involved using Hollywood's interest in celebrities for its own benefit; long and complicated story that nearly turned a friend against me..." the Doctor explained, his tone grim as he opened the paper casually, clearly looking for something to take his mind off the topic he'd just brought up, only for his eyes to widen in shock at what he saw when he did so. " _De Sande_?"

"What?" I asked, getting up from my seat as soon as the Doctor's eyes had widened in shock and walking around to stand behind my friend. Looking over his shoulder, I tried to see what had attracted my friend's attention, but a brief skim over the article revealed nothing but a basic summary about a man called Michael Angelus and his new up-and-coming film company, Fallen Star Productions, accompanied by a photograph of a dark-haired man with a distinctive scar on his cheek, demonstrating a sense of charisma and appeal even in photograph form that reminded me of the Cullens at their best.

Ironically, that charm almost made me more uncomfortable looking at this guy's photograph than I had ever felt when I was in their presence; maybe it was just how clearly shocked the Doctor was at seeing him, but something about the photograph we were looking at didn't feel right to me...

"Is something wrong?" I asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor after we'd both been staring at Angelus's picture in silence.

"Considering that the last time I met that man ended with the plane he was in being blown up with no way for him to get out without me seeing him do so, I think you can assume there's something wrong, yeah," the Doctor said, looking grimly back at me as he tapped the photograph in the paper solemnly.

"Oh," I said, my eyes widening in understanding as I looked back at the image in the paper.

I might believe in several impossible things, but if the Doctor was that convinced that someone should have died in a plane accident, I felt comfortable agreeing with his assessment that there was a problem here.

"Come on," the Doctor said, folding the paper up and tucking it under his arm as he stood up from the table. "We need to get back to the room and plan our next move."

I didn't need my already not-insignificant experience with the Doctor to know that our day's holiday had come to an end; all I could do now was hope that we could solve this problem and still have time to enjoy _some_ of what Los Angeles had to offer, rather than the Doctor's increasingly familiar habit of just leaving as soon as possible...


	2. Selyoid History

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter focuses on describing the Doctor's past history with the Selyoids and their agenda on Earth, taken from the novel 'Dying in the Sun' featuring the Second Doctor, Ben and Polly; hope you like it

"So," I asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor as we sat back down in our room, the Doctor looking pensively at our surroundings as though he wanted to make sure nobody was looking at us, "what's the big deal with... Michael Angelus?"

"Michael Angelus is an alias," the Doctor explained, looking grimly at me as he placed the paper on the table between our seats, open and displaying the image that had attracted his attention in the first place. "His real name is Leonard De Sande, and the last time I met him he was a film producer for Star Light Productions and the leader of a quasi-religious group known as the Way of Light."

"Ah," I said, nodding slightly as I processed that before looking at the Doctor again. "And... what made him dangerous?"

"In its simplest terms, he was an agent of the Selyoids," the Doctor explained.

"The Selyoids?" I repeated in confusion; I could tell that the name was spelled slightly differently, but it still sounded similar...

"Well, that wasn't really their original name- De Sande called them that as a bit of a joke-, but they didn't exactly _have_ a name before they came to Earth; from what Polly told me, they just called themselves 'the Children' before everything fell apart..." the Doctor explained. "Some terrible catastrophe on their home planet- this is all based on second-hand information I got from a friend; I don't know what actually happened to them directly- cut them off from the sunlight that they needed to survive on their home planet, and the artists who had dominated the race for so long were forced to turn to the scientists for aid. The resulting experiments led to their entire race reverting from a form based on sentient light to something more like primordial soup that could travel through space on an asteroid, eventually arriving on Earth."

"So... the Selyoids are the last survivors of a dying planet?" I asked, wanting to make sure I'd understood my friend correctly (There was something slightly touching about that, but I avoided mentioning it; the Doctor's grim expression made it clear that he didn't have much sympathy for them).

"Trust me, if all they wanted was to blend in and make a life for themselves, I'd be all for that," the Doctor said, smiling briefly at me in reassurance- evidently he'd sensed and understood my initial sympathy and wanted to reassure me about his motives- before the smile faltered and he continued his explanation. "The problem is that their new liquid state means that they can only exist on Earth by using human bodies as hosts, and while the humans themselves are mostly in control, the subject definitely experiences _some_ changes in attitude once the Selyoids have entered their systems..."

"Does this have anything to do with that... thing that nearly turned your friend against you the last time you were here?" I asked, remembering what the Doctor had said before he'd opened the newspaper.

"Her name was Polly," the Doctor said, nodding briefly in acknowledgement of my query

"She was travelling with me and a young sailor, Ben Jackson- I met them both in 1966, they wandered into the ship to return a lost key while I setting the controls to depart after we stopped this insane supercomputer together, and they ended up sticking around afterwards; they were even there during... well, a difficult time- when we ended up in Los Angeles in 1947 and decided to take a few weeks' holiday. When we were dealing with the Selyoids, she was influenced and manipulated into drinking the Selyoids- their method of gaining hosts-, and when Ben and I next ran into her, she dismissed us both as nothing but hangers-on, trying to get caught up in her glory because we didn't have any of our own, and claiming that there was nothing we could have to say that would interest her unless we were stars ourselves."

"And she wasn't like that normally?" I asked; I was fairly sure I knew the answer, but confirmation couldn't hurt.

"She told me once that she enjoyed travelling with me because it gave her a chance to help people in far more varied ways than she would have been capable of back home," the Doctor said, looking grimly at me. "Does that sound like the kind of person who'd dismiss two people she'd spent months with in favour of a washed-up actress whose career has suddenly taken off again and a former drug dealer who's experienced a significant makeover, both of whom she only met the day before?"

"Ah," I said, lost for anything else to say in response to the Doctor's words.

He'd told me stories about some of the things he'd done with his old companions in the past, but looking at him now, still clearly hurt at something that had to have happened to him centuries ago, from someone who would clearly never have done something like that on her own...

In a weird way, it was nice to know that he could still think that way about someone he couldn't have seen for several decades at least; after Edward had dismissed what we'd shared as nothing but a fleeting distraction, the idea that the Doctor could remember me the same way he remembered Ben and Polly in the future was... nice.

"So... aside from the mood alteration, what did the Selyoids actually do to people?" I asked, turning our conversation back to the original topic.

"Well," the Doctor explained, returning to his explanation, "when ingested by a human in their liquid state, the Selyoids alter various subtle details about the humans they're 'possessing', enhancing their bodies to the peak of that human's physical potential. They don't actually change the subject's appearance, but they give them an enhanced sense of charisma and neaten up some potential 'flaws', such as making Polly's hair more radiant than it usually was and giving another man an increased sense and appearance of self-confidence; I'd cite more examples, but I never met anyone else who was exposed to the Selyoids before they ingested them- and it's obviously hard to know what they left behind after they removed-, so I can't say what was changed."

"Ah," I said, my mind briefly flashing to Edward's description of the effects that vampires could have on their prey; the idea that I was dealing with another race that could 'dazzle' me was disturbing. "Anything else?"

"Well, on a personal scale, the Selyoids could also provide their hosts with a degree of enhanced healing- they could slow it if they had to; I was present when an actor who was host to some Selyoids was shot in a restaurant, and apart from an initial golden glow the Selyoids slowed his healing to the point where he needed some hospital attention-, and they were able to influence others through some kind of hypnotic charisma; that actor I mentioned tried to make Polly shoot me-"

"She _shot_ you?" I found myself repeating before I could stop myself.

I may not know Polly, but after hearing the Doctor's reasons for rejecting Christina, and after some of the stories he'd told me about his old companions, the thought of any of them actually _shooting_ him...

"Actually, it didn't quite work out; Polly's natural self and her loyalty to me meant that she shot the actor at the last minute, which made his original wounds so serious that the Selyoids couldn't handle them," the Doctor clarified, a brief smile on his face before his expression became grimmer and he continued speaking. "Anyway, that ties in to the other reason that the Selyoids are so dangerous; when treated in the right manner, the chemicals they produce could have a very hypnotic effect on the human mind, to the point that De Sande was able to add the chemicals to a film that he made to advertise the Selyoids' 'message' to the general public, making the film's effects appear far more convincing than they should be for the time as well as making those watching the film have a far more emotionally intense reaction to the storyline than they would have done under normal circumstances."

"They brainwashed people?" I asked, a sharp spike of fear passing through me at the thought; the idea of Edward _reading_ my mind had been disturbing enough, but the idea that these people could _control_ it...

"De Sande claimed that it was to a limited degree and the Selyoids wouldn't make the humans do anything they didn't want to do originally, but considering that Polly tried to kill me because one of the Selyoid hosts told her to, I think we can both agree that he was at least exaggerating," the Doctor said, waiting for me to nod in agreement before he continued. "Besides, regardless of how allegedly limited the Selyoids' influence was, we still had peoples' emotions being manipulated and reshaped against their will by foreign external influences; I think we can both agree that, whatever De Sande claimed he was doing, that was _not_ acceptable?"

I could only nod in firm resolution at that assessment; I might not know what the Selyoids thought they were accomplishing, but after the Doctor's speech about the value of free will, I was in complete agreement with my friend that anything that violated our freedom wasn't acceptable.

If I'd just resented Edward taking away my choices by leaving me, I was _never_ going to accept another race out to control my own for their benefit.

"So, if the Selyoids were all just basically acting as... enhancers... when they were in human bodies," I said, finding myself briefly stuck for a better term to describe the Selyoids' described effect on humans, "how did they communicate with humans?"

"Well, according to Polly, at least the Selyoids in her were able to share some memories and impressions of their lives before coming to Earth, but they didn't actually _speak_ to her; from what I gathered De Sande initially assumed that they were just there to enhance humanity before he found a way to communicate with them more directly," the Doctor explained. "A few Selyoids were able to fully interact with the rest of the world, but they could only do that by possessing corpses acquired from the police morgue- they only took John Does, but that's still putting them in a tenuous ethical position in my book-, and that limited their ability to perceive the world around them; an attempted experiment to give them an independent form of their own turned the Selyoid into a raving beast that essentially dispersed when it was exposed to bright light."

"They were trying to create their own bodies?" I asked, wanting to make sure I understood what the Doctor was telling me; travelling with him might be incredible, but I was rapidly learning that it was important to make sure that you understood everything you were being told. "That's why they were... brainwashing people?"

"In the short term, they were relying on using humans as Selyoid hosts to allow them to experience life in some form, while long-term plans involved using De Sande's films and other related organisations to spread 'awareness' of the Selyoids and encourage people to devote more resources to restoring them to their original form," the Doctor explained. "If De Sande had his way, the human race would have become slaves to the Selyoids, conflict and hardship essentially erased in exchange for working to 'help' the Selyoids regain their true forms while abandoning the individual strife that helps humanity grow."

"So... we'd stop fighting each other because we'd be so busy working for the Selyoids?" I said, looking sceptically at the Doctor. "And De Sande thought we'd _like_ that?"

"With the Selyoids influencing humanity, yes," the Doctor said grimly. "Getting rid of want and poverty by making everyone stars might seem like a laudable goal, but there's no way for them to do that the way De Sande was planning without encouraging awareness of the 'strength' of the Selyoids, and even then not _everyone_ would be able to receive a Selyoid."

"They'd run out of Selyoid samples eventually?" I asked grimly, reminded suddenly of a vampire comic that I'd found in a bookshop a while back; one particularly vivid paragraph had a vampire trying to convince his friend to kill him before he began a murder spree that would render vampires extinct only when they'd completely succeeded...

The results of the situation the Doctor described might not be as bloody as the scenario described in the comic- for one thing, the Selyoids weren't actually killing anyone, but just possessing them-, but the essential idea remained the same; regardless of species, once you ran out of certain key resources, your plans were pretty much screwed.

"That, and the fact that De Sande's entire plan was based on the flawed premise that everyone who didn't receive a Selyoid would just blindly worship them from afar because of the films; even if they didn't run out of Selyoid chemicals before they achieved their goal, some people would react to that stimulus with violence to try and take what they want," the Doctor said; I thought about objecting to his criticism of humanity, but quickly realised that there wasn't any point as I couldn't actually deny that the Doctor was right that _some_ people would react in the way he described when faced with something they wanted.

"There's no accounting for human nature, huh?" I said with a slight smile.

"Quite," the Doctor said, smiling slightly at me. "Still, if it's a choice between free will and world peace, I take free will any day; where's the point in being happy if the individual doesn't have the right to be what they want to be?"

It was something I'd never consciously thought much about before- I'd objected to the idea of a dictatorship as much as anyone of my generation would, but it had still seemed like an intellectual debate more than a serious topic-, but looking at the Doctor right now, I felt his belief in that statement more than I'd ever felt anything before.

Peace might be an important thing to aim for, but the Doctor was right; if we couldn't have peace without freedom, we'd lost the point of the whole reason this country had been founded in the first place.

"OK, so that's what they were doing last time you saw them... so why were you so shocked to see De Sande now?" I asked, focusing on the original reason for this conversation?"

"The last time I saw De Sande," the Doctor explained, "he'd ingested a mass amount of Selyoids into his body with the goal of giving the Selyoid in him the strength to overwhelm his own personality and become the new Selyoid director-"

"He'd _what_?" I said, my eyes widening in shock at the idea.

I might have wanted Edward to turn me, but I would have still been essentially me once the newborn hostility and thirst had passed; the idea that someone would actually want to sacrifice their very self on _purpose_...

"The original director had been absorbed by a detective that Ben and I had been working with while investigating their presence in the city- he was increasingly obsessed with the Selyoids and it drove him to destroy the director's original body to really bond with them-, and had decided to stay in him because it liked him," the Doctor explained. "De Sande hoped that he could use the others' Selyoids to enhance the strength of his own and allow it to overwhelm his personality so that it could take control, but when he was trying to escape in an airplane to give the Selyoids time to overwhelm him, I was able to disorientate the pilot and cause the plane he was using to crash."

"He was in a plane crash?" I said, eyes widening slightly as I looked at the photograph with renewed understanding; something like that would be devastating to even a vampire, never mind anything human. "No _wonder_ you were shocked to see him..."

"But I really shouldn't have been," the Doctor said grimly, staring in frustration at the wall for a moment, lost in the memory of his last encounter. "I'd seen what the Selyoids were capable of, and De Sande himself had commented that the amount of Selyoids within him would patch up any injuries he sustained at the time almost instantaneously; he would have lost some of the Selyoids within him due to the mass he lost in the initial explosion, but considering that he absorbed a whole parkful of Selyoid hosts, that would just delay him until his absorbed Selyoids could regenerate him back to a level where he could operate."

"And he just decided to start over where he left of?" I said, looking at the Doctor in surprise, going over some of the stories I'd heard Charlie tell about his colleagues to think about the problems some criminals faced trying to hide. "Wouldn't people recognise him?"

"Why should they?" the Doctor replied with a shrug. "It's been a good few years since De Sande was active, directors at this point aren't always the most public of individuals when it comes to the film-making business, and there were never that many photographs of him when he was active; your generation may be used to accessing images via the Internet, but it's not like pictures are consistently reliable these days."

" _You_ recognised him-" I pointed out.

"I have a far keener memory than the average human- plus, I've had to edit my mind to discard of some of the clutter over the years; when you live as long as I have in this life, you tend to see little point in remembering the specifics of some of the times you've spent in dungeons, as an example, thus making it easier for me to recall more important details like the face of the man who nearly brainwashed the world-, although I will admit that part of it was simple luck; again, you have to keep in mind that people tend to stick with specific newspapers, so it's probable that De Sande chose to let this paper publish his picture because he doubted anyone who knew him would see it," the Doctor explained.

With that said, he turned to study the paper thoughtfully for a few moments, before he stood up with a resolute expression. "Well, now that we've cleared up what we're dealing with here, it's time to go and deal with the situation at hand."

"Confronting De Sande directly?" I asked.

"Yes and no," the Doctor replied. "I doubt that De Sande's just going to let us in to examine his offices if we just rely on the psychic paper... but fortunately, I have a few other ideas."

"You do?" I asked, looking at my friend with a hopeful smile. "What's the plan?"

"Simple enough," the Doctor replied. "According to this, Fallen Star Productions focuses on giving failing actors a new lease on life, but I'd rather not confront any of his listed actors directly until we know where he's keeping the Selyoids; I left the Selyoids alone for too long last time, and I'd rather just cut them off at the source now."

"So... how do we do this?" I asked.

"Well, the company doesn't have a specific address listed- according to this article, all mail is to be sent to a PO box, and filmings are apparently arranged with other studios; something about them wanting to encourage awareness of other locations rather than tearing up the old for the new-, but I do know someone who has a few interesting contacts with the local film industry," the Doctor said, smiling at me as he stood up. "If we're going to find out what De Sande's up to as soon as possible, we're going to need local knowledge about this 'Fallen Star Productions' company, and even if my contact doesn't know it immediately, I'm sure he'll know someone who _can_ find it for us."


	3. Catching Up with Chate

“So... who is this 'friend' of yours?" I asked, as we got off the bus that we'd used to travel to our current destination; looking up, I was surprised to find that we were standing in front of what looked like an old church with another building on the side that resembled a small office more than anything else.

"His name's Robert Chate," the Doctor explained, the two of us walking through the initial gate before we paused inside what looked like a former graveyard, the Doctor looking at me with a slight smile as he continued to speak. "He was the adopted son of police Captain Charles Wallis, one of the Selyoids' more prominent hosts during my encounter with them- he felt that the Selyoids were the perfect way to eliminate communism due to the obvious inequality between the physically perfect Selyoids and the average human being."

"And he and De Sande never realised the obvious _conflict_ between that way of looking at things?" I asked, looking at the Doctor in surprise. "I mean, if De Sande thought that the Selyoids could be used to enhance all humans and Wallis wanted to create a contrast..."

"People can be somewhat 'blinkered' when focusing on what they want; so long as both of them were focused on increasing awareness of the Selyoids, they were probably willing to ignore their differing points of view," the Doctor explained with a slight shrug. "Anyway, Chate was working as a drug dealer- although I understand that he was planning to get out even before this particular situation started because his supplier sold him bad drugs that resulted in one of his customers dying-, when he was framed for the murder of one of FOCAL's human members because they needed the man's estate to finance their plans-"

"FOCAL?" I asked, looking at the Doctor in confusion, even as I glanced up and noted that the name in question was on the sign above the door of the church in front of us.

"Friends of the Community of Los Angeles, and I know the acronym doesn't make sense; they probably just tweaked it because it sounded better that way," the Doctor explained. "It was set up by a group of monks as a charity to help the underprivileged in the 1890s, but was subverted by the Selyoids in the 1940s; they encouraged an idea of balance, with pain required to balance out the happiness that we'd feel later, with _Dying in the Sun_ intended to send a propaganda message about the 'benefits' of their Way of Light to follow the Selyoids to encourage people to join them."

"That... makes sense," I said, nodding as I thought over what I'd just heard; when dealing with creatures that could manipulate human perception like that, it actually made sense that they'd try more conventional means of getting their 'message' across rather than just relying on their powers.

"Anyway," the Doctor continued, "with De Sande and Wallis both dead during my fight with the Selyoids, control of FOCAL passed to Chate as Wallis's only surviving relative, and the last time I saw Chate he assured me that he'd focus on turning FOCAL into a genuine charity focusing on helping out-of-work actors and other such areas."

"Oh," I said, smiling slightly at that news.

I'd come to recognise that I was growing and developing as I spent more time with the Doctor, but to hear that someone had _really_ changed because of him...

It was good to know that I wasn't just imagining the effect he was having on me; he'd changed others before me.

"So, you think he can help us find De Sande?" I asked, turning my thoughts back to the present.

"Well, FOCAL had several connections with the film industry in the past; I doubt they lost all of them when De Sande and Wallis left," the Doctor replied. "It's a long shot, but it's the best idea I've got right now; there are a few other contacts I might try, but Chate's the only one who knows what De Sande is capable of."

With that said, the Doctor turned around and knocked on the door, waiting for a few moments until a man about my age opened the door, dressed in a smart suit and looking curiously at us.

"Hello," the Doctor said, nodding politely at the young man. "I need to speak with Mr Robert Chate; is he in?"

"Just in his office, the last time I checked," the young man replied, looking curiously at the Doctor. "Why do you want to see him?"

"Just a little matter that's come up that I need his help with; I'm an old acquaintance of his," the Doctor replied, looking at the man with a reassuring smile. "Can we see him?"

"Well... he can spare a few minutes, I'm sure," the young man said, waving us inside and pointing us towards a door on the side of the initial room. Walking through the door, the Doctor and I found ourselves in a small office, where a man in his early thirties sat behind a desk, dressed in a reasonably smart suit with brown hair of a casual length, and a face that was attractive in a casual manner; unlike with the Cullens, he was more generically appealing rather than explicitly handsome to all.

"Hello, Mr Chate," the Doctor said, smiling politely at the man. "I'm the Doctor."

"What?" Chate said, standing up behind the desk and looking at the Doctor with sudden renewed suspicion. "No you're not-"

"I'm an... associate of the man you met," the Doctor explained, holding up his hands reassuringly. "'Doctor' is a codename for the operatives of our organisation; we take responsibility for dealing with the... more unusual situations, you might say?"

"Oh," Chate said, looking thoughtfully at the Doctor for a few moments before he smiled and looked at me; evidently, after what this man had experienced the last time he'd met the Doctor, he was more willing to accept such an unusual story. "And you are?"

"Bella Swan," I replied, smiling politely back at him. "I'm... his assistant."

"Just one this time?" Chate asked, looking over at the Doctor as he shook my hand. "Your colleague had two when I met him."

"Our assistants are based on personal preference and available circumstances; we don't actually need to have a particular number available," the Doctor explained (I briefly wondered if I should be offended, but dismissed that thought when I remembered that the Doctor had told me that he had travelled with two people last time he dealt with the Selyoids; he was just going along with the story he'd created).

"I... see," Chate said, nodding in slightly sceptical understanding. "So... what can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for information about Michael Angelus," the Doctor replied, the smile fading from his face as he looked more solemnly at Chate. "I assume you've heard of him?"

"Well... yeah, but-" Chate began.

"I take it you haven't seen a picture?" the Doctor continued, pulling our previously-acquired newspaper out of his pocket and opening it at the picture that had captured his attention in the first place.

"What- _De Sande_?" Chate said, his eyes widening incredulously as he stared at the image in front of him.

"That was my assessment, too... based on my associate's description of him; glad to hear it's been confirmed," the Doctor said, nodding politely at Chate. "Considering what happened the last time you and my associate saw him, I take it you realise the implications of his survival?"

"The Selyoids are back?" Chate asked, the expression on his face reminding me of the expression that I'd seen on mine when I looked in the mirror while thinking about the possibility of the Cullens coming back; a part of me wanting them to come back while the rest of me knew them coming back wouldn't change how badly things had turned out because of them.

"You hadn't seen a picture of Michael Angelus before now?" I asked, looking curiously at the man before me, trying to focus my thoughts back on the issue facing us rather than my own reflections about the past.

"Well, no, but I... I didn't really think about it," Chate explained, looking slightly shaken as he turned to face me; evidently, the issue of De Sande was still a complicated one. "I mean, Angelus is a bit of private guy, but there's nothing wrong with that; considering his habit of focusing on actors whose careers have hit a bit of a rut, I guess I'd just assumed he wanted to stay off the radar in case what he was trying didn't work out..."

"Perfectly understandable," the Doctor said, nodding politely at Chate before assuming a more curious expression. "From what I... my associate told me, you were redirecting FOCAL to explore a similar line of work to what Fallen Star are officially trying to accomplish; why haven't you made contact with Michael Angelus before now?"

"FOCAL works on helping those troubled actors who want and deserve help; most of the actors Fallen Star hires were serious drug addicts who turned to it just because they were bored rather than because they were desperate," Chate clarified. "I redirected this organisation's goal to work on helping good actors who've had a run of bad luck and are trying to hold on to a flagging career for the sake of their families or because they genuinely like what they do; Angelus would just employ people who used to be big names regardless of what they're capable of now or what reason they had for letting their careers go down the toilet."

"If it makes any difference, I prefer your methods even without knowing who Angelus is," I said, smiling encouragingly at him.

"Thanks," Chate said, smiling back at me before his expression became more serious as he looked at the Doctor. "So, what do you need from me?"

"If De Sande is back in action, we have to assume that he's utilising a new 'wave' of Selyoids," the Doctor explained. "If we're going to have any chance of investigating where he might be keeping those Selyoids, we need a legal reason for getting into Fallen Star so that we can have a look around their premises; I assume that you know people who can help us make the necessary arrangements for us to pay him a visit?"

"If De Sande and the Selyoids are back?" Chate said, looking grimly at the Doctor. "As far as I'm concerned, you're my priority until they're dealt with."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, smiling gratefully at Chate, looking briefly like he wanted to say something else before he decided against it. "How long do you need?"

"Not that long, actually," Chate replied. "Angelus has been trying to get in touch with me for a while- arranging a 'business relationship' given our similar philosophies, you know-, and he's provided me with his contact details so that we can discuss possible collaboration efforts in depth; I can just send you to a meeting with him claiming that you're there to take a look at Fallen Stars from the inside so that you can give me a better idea of how they work."

"Sounds good to me," the Doctor said, glancing over at me. "Does that work for you, Bella?"

"If it gives us a chance to look for information on the Selyoids, I'll take it," I said, nodding resolutely at my friend.

This might be one of the more challenging tasks I'd had to undertake since I started travelling with the Doctor, but I wasn't going to back down; whatever the Selyoids were up to, I was going to help the Doctor stop them.

I couldn't contribute anything to help the Cullens when James attacked me, and I'd been just as much of a victim when Laurent had attacked and the Quillettes had needed to save me from him, but I _could_ help the Doctor now...


	4. Stealing from the Fallen Stars

As we walked towards the doors of Fallen Star Productions a few hours later, I wasn't sure if I should be enjoying the opportunity or freaking out about the reasons for me receiving this opportunity; we were getting a chance to take a look at a major film production company from the inside, but at the same time we were looking for evidence of the presence of a group of brainwashing aliens...

A part of me was slightly disappointed that I was using my own name for this- it would have felt more 'spy-like' if I was using an alias-, but I could understand the Doctor's reasons; it wasn't like anyone in this time would know who I was, I had no relatives with similar names in this time period that I could be confused with, and with this being my first time attempting something like this, giving me a straightforward name that I'd have no problem remembering was only common sense.

"Why John Bowman?" I asked, looking curiously at the Doctor, suddenly curious about the origin of the Doctor's current alias.

"Because I can't remember if I used 'John Smith' as an alias the last time I dealt with De Sande and I'd like to make sure he has as few reasons to draw a connection between me and me as possible until I know what we're dealing with," the Doctor said.

"I guessed why you might not use 'Smith' as a name; I was just wondering where you got 'Bowman' from," I clarified.

"A friend introduced me as Doctor Bowman a couple of lives back, and I rather liked it," the Doctor replied, before he turned his attention back to the door and walked through it, pulling out the cards that Chate had given us- a unique occasion where he had actual paperwork rather than the psychic paper- and showing them to the woman sitting behind the desk. "Hello, I'm John Bowman, and this is my assistant, Bella Swan; we're here on behalf of Robert Chate?"

"Of course," the receptionist said, nodding at him with a smile as she indicated the door behind her. "If you'll just proceed through there, someone will be with you shortly."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, nodding politely at the woman as he turned to walk through the indicated door.

As we walked through the door and further into the building, I tried not to be too impressed at the sight of the large model in the centre of the main hall; it was clearly intended to be a falling star of some sort- even if the design was too explicitly childish, representing the five-pointed star normally drawn by children rather than a more realistic version-, a long metal 'tail' behind it to represent its descent, and a thinner duplicate of the 'tail' at the front, divided into pieces and held together by wire as it raised towards the ceiling in front of it. The hall that we were currently standing in appeared to be a central nexus point for the other corridors in the building, with other corridors spreading out from the circular central room to the rest of the building, with at least additional levels above our own floor.

"Wow..." I said, looking up at the sight before us in awe; even knowing who was behind this, that didn't make it any less impressive to witness something so grand. For a moment, I wondered about the people who must have put this all together- how many people would De Sande have to employ to make something this elaborate-, but I pushed that thought aside as soon as it occurred to me; people could find other work, but if the Doctor's tales about the Selyoids were accurate we apparently wouldn't even care if they conquered us.

"Mr Bowman?" a voice said, prompting the Doctor and I to turn around, my jaw almost dropping at the sight of the speaker.

The woman who greeted us was so uncannily beautiful that, for a moment, I thought that I was facing a vampire- one of what I had come to consider 'my' vampires, to distinguish them from the vampires the Time Lords had fought- once again, but then I registered the tanned skin and the deep blue eyes and re-evaluated that thought; I may not have encountered one in person yet, but based on the Doctor's description, this woman was a Selyoid host.

I could see what the Doctor had meant when he described the charisma and presence that the Selyoids granted to their hosts; this woman might be human, but she was almost more beautiful than Rosalie, even if I acknowledged that it was hard to judge given how cold Rose had always been to me and I therefore had never had the chance to see her when she was being as polite as this woman was being to the Doctor and me...

"Thank you," the Doctor said, politely shaking the woman's hand before indicating me. "This is my assistant, Miss Bella Swan; she'll be accompanying me on this survey."

"Of course," the woman said, looking at me with a critical expression that left me disturbed at the implications of it; with the Doctor looking like he was just old enough to be my father- assuming that he'd fathered me when he was my age, anyway-, the idea that she thought I was sleeping with him was just... _wrong_.

OK, so it was a bit strange to be disturbed by something like that when he was actually over a thousand years old and my last serious relationship was with a guy over a century my senior, but at least Edward's psychological development- from what he'd said about vampires not changing- had frozen on a level essentially similar to mine even if he'd had more life experience; being involved with someone the Doctor's apparent physical age- regardless of how old he really was- just felt... off to me, to say nothing of it feeling _completely_ wrong for me to even think of the Doctor as anything other than my friend and unofficial 'mentor' in the ways of the universe.

As we were led through another side door into various other offices, I tried to sound like I was paying attention while our guide went on about the names of various actors who probably meant something in the present but who meant nothing to me; the Doctor always talked as though he recognised the names and approved of Fallen Star giving them another shot, but I recognised a slight edge in his manner that reflected his suspicions of the company.

After we'd been walking for a few moments, the Doctor suddenly paused for a split-second to glance through a window in a door that we had just passed by, followed by him waiting a moment for our guide to walk around the corner before he pulled out the sonic screwdriver, aimed it at the door lock, and opened the door, waving me inside before he stepped in after me and closed the door behind us.

Turning to look at the room we'd entered, I was surprised to find myself looking at several glass phials, each around as long as my hand and thick as two fingers, filled with a mysterious golden liquid, apparently faintly glowing even as I looked at it- although a part of me thought that the glow could be from the lights, the rest of me knew that such a theory was ridiculous-, seemingly thicker than water at a mere glance while also being not quite as thick as honey or some similar substance. Each phial was collected in a group of six to a central circular device that fed down into another set of phials, while various tubes filled with all kinds of multi-coloured substances that I couldn't identify trickled down from the ceiling to connect to the circular devices from above.

Even more disturbing than the fact that the liquid was glowing, however, was the fact that, even when I was fairly certain what I was looking at, a part of me still wanted to _drink_ it...

"Selyoids?" I asked, looking curiously at the Doctor, forcing that sudden strange 'thirst' for the liquid before us to the back of my mind; from what the Doctor had told me about Polly's experience after she drank these creatures- how did she feel when she realised that she'd just essentially _eaten_ a living being, even if she hadn't 'killed' it?-, I had no desire to become some diva.

"Most likely," the Doctor said, nodding thoughtfully as he stared at the golden liquid in the phials before us. "A small amount in each phial, but probably enough; I never got a clear estimate of how much mass was required for an individual Selyoid to maintain its consciousness when it was drunk..."

Leaning over, he stared thoughtfully at the nearest collection of phials for a few moments, occasionally walking around the device holding them as he considered the situation in front of him, before he turned around to look at me. "Best guess; the Selyoids in De Sande when he was in the plane accident each sacrificed a portion of themselves to save him, rather than some of them completely 'burning themselves out' to keep him alive in the face of such extensive damage; the Selyoids can heal injuries, but particularly extreme wounds can be too much for them to cope with."

"You know that?" I asked.

"One host was shot in the chest twist at relatively close range; survived the first shot, but he was shot again while he was recovering in hospital," the Doctor explained. "I might assume that he had to slow his healing down so that it wasn't _too_ obvious that he was healing too quickly, but if the Selyoids had been able to save him the second time they would have, so I'm going to assume they have limits."

"And... they were only just able to save De Sande because of the sheer quantity of Selyoids within him?" I asked, wanting to be sure I was following the Doctor's reasoning.

"And even that would have probably cost most of them some form of mass; they were probably only even willing to take that kind of risk because they'd cease to exist as conscious entities if they didn't," the Doctor said, turning his attention back to the phials before us. "He must be using this equipment to try and regenerate the more weakened Selyoids; each one must have a certain amount of liquid they require to have any kind of impact on the host, and I'd guess that these other samples are intended to 'feed' the Selyoids in their natural state to replenish what they lost saving De Sande..."

"I thought you said they fed on sunlight?" I asked him.

"Particular kinds of sunlight, I'd speculate; if it was as simple as giving them a tan to charge them up, De Sande wouldn't have had so many of his cult's old meetings at night," the Doctor said. "It's probably like Superman and sunlight, really; yellow sunlight charges him up, red wears him down, that kind of thing..."

"OK, so now that we've found the Selyoids... what now?" I asked, ignoring the Doctor's surprising pop culture reference; he'd spent enough time on Earth over the centuries to have read most things, after all. "Just... empty them out?"

"No," the Doctor said, shaking his head grimly as he pulled a small glass tube out of his pocket, removed one of the phials from its container, and poured a small Selyoid sample into the tube, subsequently removing the other five phials and pouring a similarly small amount into the tube; I guessed that he wanted to collect a good amount of the liquid while limiting the possibility that someone would notice what was missing by taking the same amount from all the phials close to each other. "If I can study these samples, maybe I can work out a way to give the Selyoids some kind of corporeal form without them needing to use humans as slaves; if we can get them to leave this planet on their own, maybe we won't need to resort to more drastic measures..."

Glancing out of the window in the door we'd entered by, I was relieved to see that the corridor still seemed to be empty; either our earlier guide hadn't noticed that we'd gone missing yet, or she simply didn't know where we'd gone.

"Right then," the Doctor said, slipping the small tube into his pocket before he turned and smiled at me, "now that we've got that, how about getting out of here?"

"Uh... isn't doing this a bit... obvious?" I asked, looking uncertainly at the Doctor as a flaw in his plan suddenly occurred to me; I'd gone along with his original decision at the time, but now that I thought about it what he'd done seemed a bit rash. "I mean, we ducked out of a _guided tour_..."

"If De Sande's confident enough to let any kind of photograph of himself be published after what happened to him last time, he's approaching a point where he'd be taking action to publicise the Selyoids' presence on a large scale anyway; given that he still doesn't know _who_ I am, he'll be somewhat paranoid, but he'll focus on the central mission rather than worry about someone who just wandered off," the Doctor explained, as he patted the pocket containing the sample he'd acquired. "Besides, with this available, I can at least explore a few options for dealing with the Selyoid hosts in the TARDIS laboratory before he's even realised what we were up to..."

As the Doctor turned to hurry down the corridors towards the exit, I decided to put aside my old doubts and focused on keeping up with him as he ran out of the studio.

I may not fully understand what he was thinking of doing, but I could at least be sure that he had a plan in mind; the Doctor might be strange, but he wouldn't abandon a crisis like this without doing everything in his power to solve it.

I just hoped that whatever De Sande was building up to wasn't _too_ imminent; the Doctor might be brilliant, but surely analysing something like the Selyoids wouldn't exactly be straightforward...


	5. Reading in Orbit

As we returned to the TARDIS- the Doctor commandeering a taxi cab by using the psychic paper; I thought that I heard him identify us as secret agents to tell the driver to get us to our destination as quickly as possible-, I wondered whether it was entirely normal how calm I felt about this whole situation.

Here I was, in my own planet's past, attempting to prevent an alien invasion by a sentient yellow liquid that turned humans into what I could only think of as living vampires, led by a film producer with a god complex, and I was actually astonishingly calm about it all.

What did that say about me?

I'd known that my mind wasn't exactly wired the right way ever since I learned about my immunity to Edward's power, but the thought that I was calm when dealing with something that could change my planet's history and potentially turn my species into willing slaves without them even protesting...

I didn't know if that made me weird or if I just had faith that the Doctor would be able to stop it; all that mattered right now was that we were there to stop whatever the Selyoids had planned, and I wasn't going to give up and let the Doctor handle this on his own just because I couldn't think of any contribution I could make to the Doctor's plans myself...

"We're here," the Doctor's voice said, breaking my train of thought, prompting me to glance out of the taxi window to see the TARDIS at the end of the alley where we'd left it. As the taxi came to a halt, I all but jumped out of the taxi and ran for the ship, my usual clumsiness forgotten despite the difficulties in moving in my current dress, the Doctor mere seconds behind me as he paused to pay the driver before hurrying after me. As we entered the ship, I allowed myself a brief smile at the sight of the TARDIS's now-familiar interior- something about the ship made it _feel_ more like a home after a few weeks than I'd felt even when living in Forks-, but the smile was replaced by confusion when the Doctor walked over to the console and set the shit into motion.

"What... we're _leaving_?" I said, looking at the Doctor in shock. "But... the Selyoids-!"

"We're not going anywhere; I've just moved the TARDIS into temporal orbit," the Doctor explained, smiling reassuringly at me.

"Temporal orbit?" I repeated in confusion, surprised at the sudden unfamiliar term. "What does that mean?"

"Put simply, I've set the TARDIS to go back in time at the same rate that time's flowing forward around us," the Doctor explained, patting the console affectionaly. "Essentially, we're frozen in the same point in time and space; with the TARDIS constantly travelling slightly backwards in time as time passes around it, we're essentially staying at the same point in time as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, which means I'm able to take as much time as I want to look at this stuff without worrying about things taking place outside the ship."

"Oh," I said. "Well... that makes sense."

"Exactly," the Doctor said, smiling at me before he shrugged and pulled the phial out of his pocket, tossing it into the air before he grabbed it in his other hand. "Well, I'm off to the lab to work on the antidote; you..."

He shrugged helplessly, clearly stuck for anything he could say to me in this situation that wouldn't sound condescending.

"Just take advantage of the opportunity for a time-out," I finished, smiling in understanding at the Doctor as I turned to head deeper into the TARDIS making for the room that I'd found and 'claimed' as my own a few weeks back.

I wasn't entirely sure if I should be grateful or annoyed at the dismissal- the chance for a break in the middle of a crisis like this wasn't exactly unwelcome, but I couldn't help but feel annoyed at the idea that I was being pushed aside like Edward had tried to keep me 'safe' from the vampire side of his life-, but in the end I decided to focus on preparing for our imminent confrontation with the Selyoids. Heading for my room, the first thing I did was to change out of my dress- it might be stylish for the current era, but I didn't think it was fully appropriate for the situation we were about to go into-, pulling on a pair of dark trousers and a shirt that would at least avoid attracting too much attention; if I wore my hair the right way, I could probably pass as a boy while we were out on the street, and when we were confronting De Sande I wouldn't care what he thought of me so long as we won.

More casually attired, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to catch up on my reading, and took a quick walk to the TARDIS library, which today was located relatively close to my room (The TARDIS interior seemed to change around a lot, as though the ship was trying to compensate for the fact that its exterior remained fixed). For a moment, my hand hovered over the section of the library containing my usual romance novels, but on impulse I moved away from the Austens and instead picked up _The Time Machine_ by H. G. Wells; given how my view on the world had changed, it was only appropriate that I adapt my reading material accordingly.

The concepts in the book itself were a bit tricky to follow at times- and I couldn't exactly ignore the fact that my time in the TARDIS had taught me enough to know that time travel didn't quite work like what Wells was describing; from what the Doctor had briefly told me the TARDIS worked by travelling through the higher dimensions of existence-, but there was something interesting in seeing how Wells perceived the future would turn out based on the society he lived in when he wrote the book.

I continued to read through the text for an hour or so, but eventually put it aside- the mystery of what kind of creature was living underground was interesting, but it wasn't enough to grab my attention with the kind of stakes we were dealing with right now in my mind-, and put _Time Machine_ aside in favour of a copy of _War of the Worlds_ close to it on the Doctor's shelves. The story quickly proved more immediately engaging- the contrast between the methods of conquest used by the Martians and the more subtle and manipulative methods of the Selyoids was rather fascinating in its way, as I found myself comparing the raw power Wells envisioned the Martians using against us to the more secretive measures used by the Selyoids-, but my reading was cut short when the Doctor walked into the library with a smile.

"We've got it," the Time Lord said as I looked up at him, holding up what looked like a silver aerosol can with a smile. "If I'm right- and I generally am-, this should allow me to drive the Selyoids out of their hosts, so long as I can spray it onto the hosts in some way or another..."

"Spray it?" I repeated, looking at him curiously.

"I wanted something that could get the job done regardless of the circumstances we found ourselves in," the Doctor explained. "Selyoids can heal, but they're not exactly more physically powerful than the average human host in a fight in my experience, so besting them in a physical confrontation isn't out of the question; I don't think we have the time to worry about trying a more subtle approach, and we want De Sande to get our point anyway."

"What... _is_ our point, exactly?" I asked, looking thoughtfully at the Doctor. "I mean, what exactly do we want him to do, apart from just... leave Earth alone?"

"Well, our immediate priority should be to get them out of their current hosts; I don't exactly like it, but if we can confront them from a position of strength, we should be able to make my argument more convincing," the Doctor explained. "Hopefully, if I can convince the Selyoids that I'm willing to help them regain corporeal form _without_ the need for them to get the rest of the human race involved in the process, we may be able to get them to listen to me; if at all possible, I'd rather not destroy a species that are just trying to survive after a bad experience."

"And... can you?" I asked. "Help them regain corporeal form, I mean?"

"With this as a means of driving them out, I should be able to reverse-engineer a means of restoring the Selyoids to some variation of their original form," the Doctor replied. "Making them reject existence in a corporeal body isn't that far removed from being able to restore their ability to manifest an independent corporeal form; I'm essentially 'reminding' their forms that they don't need to use others to get around, after all."

"I'll... take your word for it," I said, nodding awkwardly at my friend; I might trust the Doctor, but at the same time it was still often hard to follow some of his more complicated scientific explanations, and I _definitely_ didn't understand how he could make beings that were once essentially light do anything. "So... where to now?"

"A quick stop on the way over, and then we're on our way," the Doctor said, smiling at me as he turned to head back towards the console room, leaving me to hurry after him, my own spirits bolstered by the Doctor's obvious confidence.

I might not _know_ what the Doctor was planning to do yet, but with him leading humanity's defence against the Selyoids, I already knew that we would be safe.


	6. Facing the Producer

As we stood outside the Fallen Stars studio once again- the TARDIS now parked in a different ally a short walk away from this building; we didn't want to give De Sande too many clues that the Doctor wasn't human-, I was glad to see that my theory about my clothing choice seemed to have been accurate; with my hair tied back so that it seemed to be almost as short as Alice's, and dressed in a long coat I'd acquired from the TARDIS wardrobe, I could apparently almost pass as a boy from a cursory glance, which prevented anyone asking too many questions about why I was going around dressed like this.

"Remember," the Doctor said, looking at me with a warning stare as he paused outside the door, "be assertive and confident, but don't do anything to attract _too_ much attention; you have to act at the right moment, or this won't work."

"Understood," I said, before another thought occurred to me. "Just to check, are we going to mention who you are, or are we sticking with the 'colleagues' cover story?"

"Colleagues; De Sande and the Selyoids are likely to be more careless if they think I'm human," the Doctor replied, letting me nod in understanding before he walked through the doors in front of him, pulling out the psychic paper and holding it out to the receptionist sitting behind the desk, this one a different employee to the woman who'd greeted us on our last visit. "Hello, Secret Service; we have to talk with Mr Angelus."

"But-" the woman began, looking between the two of us in confusion; I guessed that she was puzzled at the Doctor's British accent when we claimed to be here from the Secret Service, even if I couldn't tell if she'd identified my real gender.

"Special loan from Interpol for the moment; do you _really_ want to argue with us when dealing with national security?" the Doctor said, staring at the woman for a few moments before she finally seemed to stop her admittedly weak 'protest' and nodded.

"He's... he's up there," she said, indicating a nearby elevator. "The top floor; you'll be taken straight to his office..."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, smiling briefly at her before he glanced back at me. "Come along, Agent Swan."

"Of course, Agent Smith," I replied, automatically lowering my voice to make myself sound more masculine as I followed my friend into the elevator- for the moment, I could probably pass as a slightly feminine young man if nobody paid too much attention-, the Doctor quickly pressing the button for the top floor as soon as I entered.

"That was... easy," I said, looking curiously over at the Doctor.

"We're still in the thick of the McCarthy Trials, Bella; people don't want to be seen as being uncooperative with government investigations, particularly not ones arranged by the Secret Service," the Doctor said, his expression grim at the thought of the topic in question before he shrugged and smiled back at me. "Still, it makes it easier for us at the moment, so we can't really complain, I suppose."

I didn't need to know the Doctor well to know that he was lying, but I also knew that he had made a valid point; right now, anything that stopped people questioning what we were doing here was something in our favour.

Before I could think about that topic any more, the elevator came to a halt, revealing a large room with a window almost the size of the wall it was on at the opposite end, stretching out to show a sizeable portion of Los Angeles when you looked out of it. Sitting in a desk in front of the window was a tall, handsome man with a slight scar on his cheek and a distinctive gold tooth, his well-tanned skin and dark hair giving him a movie star-like quality, even as his natural charisma he presented merely by being there left me simultaneously impressed and uncomfortable at the reminder of the Cullens.

"What the...?" the man known to the public as Michael Angelus said, looking at the opening door in confusion as the Doctor and I walked out of it.

"Hello, Leonard de Sande," the Doctor said, smiling slightly as he looked at the man who was even now standing up from behind his desk, looking at my friend in shocked confusion while I simply stood a short distance behind the Doctor. "It's been a while."

"I don't know what you're talking about-" De Sande began, trying to look indignant and confused at the Doctor's accusation and failing miserably; I wondered if his Selyoid-enhanced physiology meant that he'd grown so used to people being deferential to him that he wasn't sure how to cope when faced with someone who didn't.

"Don't try and play dumb with me, Leonard," the Doctor said, his smile shifting to a glare as he stared at the other man. "My colleague provided me with a detailed description of you and your methods, to say nothing of the samples I acquired yesterday; how long did it take your Selyoids to knit you back together after what happened last time, anyway?"

For a moment, De Sande simply stared back at my friend, his expression shifting between various expressions, until he smiled in resignation.

"When you say your 'colleague', you're referring to the Doctor, I take it?" he said, shaking his head slightly as he looked at the Time Lord.

"You were expecting him?" the Doctor asked; at least De Sande seemed to be assuming that the Doctor wasn't the same person as the man he'd met last time.

"I may have taken precautions against being recognised, but I always knew that I couldn't pull that off forever; staying behind the scenes was never my goal," De Sande said, still studying my friend in a contemplative manner. "I suppose I should have expected he'd send someone else if he couldn't come himself; he never could understand what we offered..."

"Which was what, exactly?" the Doctor asked, glaring back at De Sande. "No, wait, let me guess; 'freedom from fear, freedom from pain', right?"

"I was more thinking of freedom from failure, actually," De Sande replied, smiling back at the Doctor in what was probably intended to be a compelling manner. "After all... what's your name?"

"Just call me 'Doctor'," the Doctor replied.

"Another doctor?" De Sande said, looking at him in momentary confusion before he shook it off. "Never mind; that's not important right now."

"And what _is_ important, from your perspective?" the Doctor asked, his tone a deceptively calm one as he looked at De Sande.

"That _you_ understand why I'm doing this, even if the other Doctor didn't," De Sande replied, looking earnestly at him; I wondered if he even registered the meaning of the Doctor's stance as he looked at the other man. "Your colleague didn't want to accept it, but it's been four years since then, and haven't you seen how divided we're becoming? Everything's fractured and broken, people willing to go to war over simple political and ideological differences, trust a thing of the past as we're all willing to sell out our own neighbours to protect ourselves, everybody afraid of those in power but lacking the courage or desire to voice their objection..."

Looking at De Sande as he spoke, I wondered if everything he was saying now reflected how he'd felt before he was first exposed to the Selyoids- did he really think that humanity was falling apart unless someone 'took charge'?-, or if he was just using this story to excuse his more straightforward desire from power.

I knew from some of the stories I'd heard from the Cullens about how becoming something else could warp your pre-existing 'standards'- the idea that James could be that ruthless when he had been human himself was evidence enough of that-, but I also knew from Carlisle in particular that what you'd been as a human could shape what you became later (Carlisle was the most notable example because everyone else in the family had been able to look to him as a 'role model'; it was harder to set the path than it was to do what someone had done already), but even if I couldn't be sure what De Sande had been like before he found the Selyoids, I was certain that what he had become was shaped by them to a significant degree at best.

"And you think that creating a definite 'upper class' will _solve_ that problem?" the Doctor asked, looking sceptically at De Sande as I returned my attention to the matter at hand.

"Put the power in the hands of people that everyone will like and trust, and it's all simple from there on in," De Sande said, smiling encouragingly at the Doctor. "Think about it, Doctor; people will debate and complain about what politicians will do, but present a positive appearance with no hidden agenda-"

"From _actors_?" I said, looking sceptically at him; I'd worry about attracting the attention of someone as dangerous as De Sande once I'd said my piece. "You really think the public will trust people who essentially lie for a living?"

"Why shouldn't they?" De Sande asked with a smile. "Actors are always accessible to the public, their motives and agendas for doing what they do are simple, and the best ones always make themselves available to their public; it's the perfect solution. Put our futures in the hands of those who have our backgrounds, and it will all be so much easier; they'll understand our problems and how to help us get over them, they'll have a clearly dea why we want certain things and will work to ensure that we get them-"

"So, in a nutshell, we should give power to the Selyoid hosts because it frees us from being ruled by the upper classes who don't get the plight of the common man?" the Doctor said (Under other circumstances, I would have been surprised at the Doctor so easily referring to humanity as 'us', but considering that he was trying to reinforce the illusion that _he_ was human it made sense, and it wasn't like he hadn't been around long enough to be classified as an 'honorary human' from what I'd heard about his past). "It sounds good when you consider them as individual people, but even before you add the Selyoids into the equation on a larger scale, it all boils down to the same thing as far as I'm concerned."

"Which is?" De Sande asked,

"Freedom from freedom," the Doctor replied.

I couldn't believe that De Sande actually smiled at that statement.

"That just shows how little you still understand, Doctor," he said, shaking his head as he looked at my friend. "The Selyoids don't enslave us; they _free_ us-"

"From the burden of free will by making those exposed to their pheromones blindly devoted to them so that they're more concerned with what the Selyoids want rather than what they want; that's not freedom by any definition _I_ understand," the Doctor said firmly. "Maybe the hosts start out as being those who can relate to the common man, but the Selyoids deprive them of that ability; Polly told... my colleague... herself that her time as a Selyoid host featured her being virtually completely emotionally disconnected from her 'fans', to say nothing of how she treated Ben even after everything they'd been through."

"We're entitled to some respect-" De Sande said.

"You want to be men of the people _and_ you want respect?" I asked sceptically, looking at De Sande in frustration (I wasn't sure if it was just my time with the Doctor or that period of self-analysis I'd undergone in the Dalek mines, but I was finding it easier to objectively consider what made people tick, and right now De Sande wasn't presenting an appealing picture to me). "I don't know much about politics, but I _don't_ think that's how it works..."

"She's right, you know, De Sande," the Doctor said, glaring at the producer. "Whatever you might like to think, non-Selyoid humans aren't sheep who'll follow your ideas whatever you come up with; you can't ask for them to just follow you and expect nothing but blind obedience. Fletcher was one of the general population you think you'll win over; do you remember what happened to him?"

"He was a special case-" De Sande began.

"He _attacked_ the Selyoid director because he was so consumed by the need to be one with the Selyoids that he didn't care who he hurt; that doesn't sound like an example of a peace-inspiring leader to me," the Doctor said, his glare fixed on the director. "You'll win their admiration easily enough, but it won't take long for admiration to become envy and then you're just back where you started; the lower classes angry at the upper-"

"But we'll be spared the paranoia of the present," De Sande interjected with a smile that suggested that he was amused at the Doctor's inability to see the bigger picture. "And it _will_ get better, Doctor; humanity will have something to strive for-"

"Humanity _already_ has things to strive for!" the Doctor retorted firmly. "Maybe our goals are divided and our objectives differ, but we're all out there, reaching for the stars in our own way! Maybe if your way worked and humanity united under the Selyoid banner, we'd get there faster, but we'd get there for the wrong reasons; we'd get there to _serve_ , not because we just wanted to _go_ there and see what we could find-!"

"Yes, I should have expected something like this from a Doctor," De Sande said- something about his tone suggested a certain frustrated scorn- before he turned to look at me. "How about you, Mr... Miss?"

"Bella Swan," I said, smiling slightly as I noted his reaction upon realising that I was a girl; he might be possessed by aliens, but at least he was clearly still a victim of the social standards of his time, which meant that he might underestimate what it would take to win me over.

"Well then, Bella," the producer said, looking thoughtfully at me, "let me ask you a few questions; haven't you ever lost something?"

"Yes..." I said, almost before I'd even realised that I'd intended to speak; something about the way he was looking at me...

"And it hurt, didn't it?" De Sande said, smiling at me with a grin that was probably meant to be reassuring but just left me feeling like I was face-to-face with James or Laurent once again. "Wouldn't it be easier if you could escape from your pain-"

"I wouldn't want that," I said, looking firmly back at De Sande.

It was only when I said those words that I realised that I really meant it; I didn't want to get away from my pain any more.

Even if I hadn't moved past the pain I'd felt when Edward had left me by now, hadn't the reason I'd held on to that pain for so long been because it was the only 'proof' I had that I had felt something so deep for someone else in the first place?

Losing Edward had hurt when it had originally happened, and I'd retreated into myself to escape the pain to such an extent that I'd barely even registered what was happening around me while I was left reeling from everything I'd lost, but now that I was out of that semi-void again, thanks to help from Jacob and Charlie and the Doctor...

A part of me would always miss and love Edward even after he'd left me, just as a part of me would miss and love the Doctor- even if I wouldn't miss and love them in the same way- when the time came for me to return to Earth and my own time when my time in the TARDIS came to an end, but I wouldn't trade the memories I'd gained by spending time with them for anything.

I had felt such intense pain over Edward leaving because I had felt so much love for him before he'd left... and even if he'd never felt that intensely about me, that didn't change the fact that I had received his love for a time.

"I wouldn't want to lose that pain," I said, staring firmly back at De Sande. "It hurt when it was over, but it was _incredible_ while it lasted... and I'd rather feel that pain for the rest of my life than forget what it was like before that happened."

For a moment, De Sande looked almost sad as he processed what I had just said, looking at me with a grim expression of contemplation.

"What the Selyoids offer, Bella, is a chance to never _feel_ that pain in the first place," he said, still looking urgently at me. "Isn't that worth anything? To really understand-?"

"And what makes you think that any 'understanding' you offer is actually real?" I asked. "Finding the Selyoids threw off everything you thought you knew about the world; what makes you think that there isn't something out there that they don't know about either? Is

"You don't have to do this, De Sande," the Doctor said suddenly. "I can help you."

"You can help?" De Sande asked, looking at him in surprise. "Why?"

"Because I'm the Doctor," the Doctor responded, looking solemnly at his enemy. "Whatever you might think of me, in the end, I'd prefer to find a peaceful solution to this whole mess, and that includes finding the Selyoids somewhere where they can develop; all I ask is that you leave humanity to develop on its own."

For a moment, a part of De Sande almost seemed to be interested in that offer, but then his momentary expression of interest vanished, leaving nothing but a frustrated yet resigned expression of disappointment.

"You know," he said, shaking his head as he looked at us, "if you'd just tried to see things my way, you would have made this so much easier..."

Before the Doctor or I could react, De Sande had suddenly leapt across his desk, grabbed the Doctor by the back of the head, hauled his head backwards with such force that the Doctor automatically opened his mouth to yell, and tipped a phial that had previously been in his pocket down my friend's throat before he had time to close his mouth.

"DOCTOR!" I yelled, dashing forward and grabbing the Doctor as he fell backwards; I staggered under the sudden weight in my arms, but I was able to lower him down to the ground after taking a moment to regain my balance, despite the violent tremors that suddenly overwhelmed the Doctor's body.

"What happened to not _forcing_ anyone to do anything?" I yelled, glaring at the hypocritical producer as my friend lay on the floor, gasping for air as his whole body trembled.

"Once he's felt them, he'll _understand_!" De Sande said, grinning at me with the kind of grin I could all-too-clearly remember having seen on James's face when he was preparing to try and kill me that somehow also reminded me of Jake's grin when he was showing me the motorbike. "He'll realise what I'm trying to accomplish-"

His speech was cut short by the sound of someone throwing up, the two of us turning around in time to see the Doctor on his hands and knees, expelling a thick gold liquid from his mouth, the liquid lying on the floor for a few moments before it seemed to rapidly evaporate, vanishing into thin air as the Doctor looked up at De Sande and me.

"Sorry," he said, a grin on his face despite the weakness in his voice. "I don't agree with that... on _any_ level."

" _What_?" De Sande said, looking between the Doctor and the golden puddle in front of him in shock. "But... but those were _Selyoids_ -!"

"In other words, you tried to _make_ the Doctor see your point of view because you didn't agree with his perspective; how is what you're doing any different to what you claim is causing the problem?" I asked, looking scathingly at De Sande, my confidence unexpectedly aided by my anger at what he'd tried to do. "We're trying to talk to you here, and all you're doing is shoving drugs on us to make us more agreeable-?"

" _It's not drugs_ -!" De Sande yelled, reaching out towards me with both hands, as though preparing to grab me by the throat, only for his hands to suddenly seem to... _droop_ was the only word I could think of... before they could actually touch me.

"What...?" De Sande said, staring at his hands in horror, the limbs now flopping from his wrists as though he was wearing overly large gloves.

"Losing hold of everything, De Sande?" the Doctor said, smirking slightly as he looked at the producer. "Having trouble holding yourself together after that explosion?"

"The Selyoids _saved_ me-!" De Sande protested.

"From a blast powerful enough to virtually vaporise an airplane and disperse a not-inconsiderable amount of their discorporated mass across Los Angeles?" the Doctor interrupted, smiling grimly at De Sande. "They could piece you back together, I grant you, but it would take a lot of effort to maintain something like that; get yourself worked up enough- I'm guessing you haven't had a reason to get _really_ emotional about anything since you were restored; Selyoid pheromones make it all too easy for you-, and I'll think you'll find that the Selyoids lose the ability to cope with all that chemical warfare going on inside your body..."

"NO!" De Sande yelled, desperately reaching out to grab the Doctor, only for his hands to become completely detached from the rest of him as he tried to touch the Time Lord, leaving only lumps of flesh on the end of arms that rapidly began to decompose right in front of me.

"Th-this isn't happening..." De Sande said, his expression becoming increasingly panicked as he stared at what had been his hands. "This isn't happening... this _can't_ be happening... I'm _Leonard De Sande_ -!"

"Oh, shut _up_!" I said, walking over to slap De Sande in the face- after everything I'd been through recently, even if I normally agreed with the Doctor's disinclination towards violence, right now I just wanted something to hit-, only to find myself staring in shock as my hand left De Sande's jaw hanging loose and his left cheek completely flat.

"You're falling apart, De Sande," the Doctor said, staring solemnly at the other man as De Sande looked at us in ever-increasing. "The Selyoids can keep a healthy body going, but after everything you went through in that airplane..."

He sighed, looking at De Sande with genuine pity as the man's left arm fell off. "There's nothing we can do now; you got yourself worked up to the point where they can't cope with everything you lost."

"You did this...!" De Sande said, his voice only just understandable through his damaged jaw, his skin becoming increasingly paler.

"Hey, you only got worked up about this because we didn't just blindly accept everything you had to say; this is _your_ fault, not ours!" I said, glaring indignantly at him while trying not to think too much about the fact that a man was literally coming apart right in front of me; I'd seen people die during our confrontation with the Daleks, but this was worse considering the amount of time it was taking...

"I just... wanted to help..." De Sande said, his voice growing weaker as his legs broke underneath him, now too spindly and frail to support his weight. As his voice was reduced to a series of mumbles, as though his vocal chords had lost the ability to work to any significant degree, all that the Doctor and I could do was watch as the thing that had once been Leonard De Sande collapsed into a pile of ash and bone, faint tinges of golden liquid visible amid the ash before it seemed to dry up.

"Did you...?" I asked, looking over at the Doctor before I could stop myself, only realising after I started speaking that a part of me didn't want to know the answer.

"I thought that his body was less stable than he might think, but I had no idea it could get _that_ bad," the Doctor said, looking grimly back at me before he turned his attention back to the assorted refuse that had previously been De Sande. "Still, at least that saves us having to negotiate with him..."

"And... what about anyone else exposed to the Selyoids?" I asked. "How do we deal with that?"

"From what I saw while we were in the lab earlier, I don't think he had enough resources yet to actually give anyone else complete Selyoid samples; as I said, he was trying to restore the Selyoids to full strength based on the fragments left within him, but until then he wouldn't be able to actually have a permanent effect on anyone," the Doctor explained. "Anyone with Selyoid samples in them at the moment would essentially be using a drug that will eventually be metabolised and incorporated into their systems; the Selyoids can give them a boost, but I doubt we have anything with any degree of sentience out there."

"And what about the samples downstairs?" I asked, reminding him of the room we'd recovered earlier. "What do we do with those Selyoids?"

"Oh, I've got a few ideas..." the Doctor said, smiling thoughtfully at me.


	7. A New Home for the Selyoids

"You're sure this is going to work?" I asked, looking sceptically between the piles of containers that now filled the TARDIS's control room and the Doctor. "You've told me before that you're a bit erratic..."

"Have I let you down yet, Miss Swan?" the Doctor asked, looking at me with an offended yet amused smile.

"We haven't actually had a specific target date that I've requested yet, so I can't say," I replied, smiling slightly at the Doctor to take any potential sting out of my words (I might be sure that the Doctor wouldn't just leave me, but there was still that small part of me that constantly remembered how things had ended with Edward). "Add in the fact that you haven't been _that_ clear on where we're going..."

In truth, my current 'banter'- and I almost couldn't believe that; I'd been constantly shaken after I'd faced people who wanted to kill me and nothing else when the Cullens and the Quillettes had saved me from James and Laurent respectively, and here I was being so casual about- was just to distract myself from thinking about the relative ease of what we'd just done; I almost couldn't believe that saving the world had been that easy.

Leaving Fallen Star Studios hadn't actually been that difficult; considering our 'secret Service' status, the receptionist had avoided asking any questions about what we'd spoken with De Sande about, and it wasn't like we had any kind of 'real' identity in this time that would result in us being questioned when someone found De Sande's body, even if anyone was willing to consider the possibility that we'd somehow managed to kill him in a manner that left him in that state.

Before leaving the office, we'd managed to gather all of the information that we needed from the files De Sande kept in his filing cabinets regarding the distribution of the Selyoids and his team's progress on restoring them- from what the Doctor could tell, De Sande had employed multiple scientists to explore various methods of regenerating the Selyoids, avoiding providing any one person with enough information to put it all together and realise what they were working on-, and, with that, we'd subsequently returned to the office via the TARDIS, the Doctor disabling the ship's temporal circuits to prevent us from time-travelling anywhere by accident and subsequently homing in on one of the labs that had been identified as the area where the Selyoid samples were kept.

With most of the Selyoids in storage awaiting treatment with De Sande's regeneration equipment, I'd spent some time loading the Selyoid vats into the TARDIS while the Doctor had gone over De Sande's files to find the addresses for some of Fallen Star's clients and paid them all a quick visit, but he'd soon confirmed that even those who had received Selyoids had only received a partial sample that would eventually decay without additional doses from De Sande. I felt somewhat bad about the fact that these people were going to lose the career 'boost' they'd received from the Selyoids, but consoled myself with the knowledge that, given Fallen Star's client focus, most of these people had already failed in their chosen profession on their own; if they'd needed alien influence to get anywhere, they probably didn't deserve to be in their current profession anyway.

"Where we're going is actually up to the TARDIS," the Doctor explained, patting the console affectionately as he looked at me, bringing my thoughts back to the present. "I've set the old girl to find a planet that fits the criteria I've assigned to the search pattern, and after that it's all up in the air."

"You're searching for a particular planet?" I asked, looking at him curiously; he'd been more focused on gathering the samples than explaining his plans, so I hadn't had the chance to ask him for more detail before now. "Why?"

"We're giving them a chance to develop on their own in a better environment," the Doctor explained. "The samples I acquired from Robert Chate give me an idea of what the Selyoids don't need to exist- the residue they leave behind after vacating hosts, you know-, while De Sande's work gave me some pointers on what they're lacking at the moment, so with that information I can use some synthetic samples acquired from medical facilities in the future to give the Selyoids the ability to regenerate their physical forms by absorbing certain energy wavelengths found on other planets."

"You can do that?" I asked, looking at him curiously. "Just... take stuff from the future, I mean?"

"I managed to 'steal' a synthetically-grown infant from a lab in the future and infuse it with the life essence of one of my most powerful enemies before leaving it with some friends; after that, acquiring assorted cell samples is relatively easy," the Doctor explained, shrugging casually before he turned back to look at the TARDIS. "Ah, here we are."

Before I could ask him what he meant, he turned around to open the door in front of us, revealing a brilliant jungle landscape illuminated by an equally dazzling blue sun, filled with purple plants as far as the eye could see.

"The Selyoids' new home," the Doctor said, smiling at me before he returned his attention the landscape spread out before us. "It's not perfect- it'll take a long time for them to develop any kind of civilisation, and they'll need some time to naturally develop what we've taught them to do artificially-, but they've got a chance to grow this way."

"What made you choose this planet?" I asked, shaking off my initial awe to look at the Doctor. "I mean, I get that you ran a scan, but what about _this_ planet made it particularly appropriate?"

"Based on my scans, its' sun should generate the energy required for the Selyoids to regenerate their physical forms- in their natural state they were predominately light before whatever happened to them happened, after all-, and then it just takes a bit of time and patience for them to get back to the level they were at on their homeworld before the catastrophe took place," the Doctor said.

"And… it's safe?" I asked.

"Safe as anything," the Doctor confirmed with a nod. "Out of the way from the rest of the universe, no historical events scheduled to take place on it in the foreseeable future, and scheduled to remain intact for quite a few millennia before this particular solar system's run its course."

"Good," I said, out of a lack of anything else to say at that news.

Looking out at the rich young planet that the Doctor had chosen as the Selyoid homeworld, I had to admit that the Doctor seemed to have made a good choice.

After all, from everything he'd told me about the Selyoids, they didn't actually _need_ any of the creature comforts that De Sande had been helping their hosts acquire, given their original state as sentient light; all they needed was something that would allow them to develop their own independent forms once again, and then they'd be comfortable wherever they were, enjoying whatever passed for popular culture on their world.

It might be a bit off to give the race that had tried to conquer Earth a chance to grow and develop in peace, but if they'd been able to find another way, then I couldn't judge them for what they'd done with De Sande as their 'director' any more than I'd judged Edward for the time he'd spent killing humans; they'd done what seemed right at the time, and stopped when they'd learned that there was another way.

"Now then," the Doctor said, smiling as he indicated the containers beside us, "shall we see what would make the best dispersal method, and get on with getting these Selyoids into their new home before we get back to our holiday?"

"Sounds good to me," I said, grinning at the thought of what we were about to do, both right now and afterwards.

My world's history remained unaltered, a madman with delusions of power above himself had been defeated, and we'd saved a species…

All in all, it hadn't been a bad trip to Los Angeles, even if it had been somewhat unconventional.

A part of me still couldn't quite believe it; I had just saved a _species_ , and I was friends with a man who considered that a normal day at the metaphorical office.

God, I'd been _face to face_ with a man determined to reshape the world according to his vision, and I'd told him _exactly_ what I thought of him with nothing more behind me than… well, me.

I didn't know where I'd found that kind of courage, but I had to admit, after my previous epiphany in the Dalek mines, I was starting to like myself again…

**Author's Note:**

> For those who want to know where De Sande came from, he fought the Second Doctor in the novel 'Dying in the Sun'; I'll include more detailed information about his background in the next chapter


End file.
